Poetry - Lynn White

Secrets Do you have a secret life, with secret places explored only by yourself? Do you? Tell me about it, let me in. No you can’t, of course you can’t, it’s a secret. Only you can go there. So I must imagine your secret life for myself. May I? Perhaps a house with another family in it. Perhaps a box hidden under the floor containing old love letters or pornographic magazines Am I getting warm? Of course you won’t say. Well, you can’t say. For you are part of my secret life. My imaginings, my dreams and fantasies. And they are part of me. As real to me as the life I expose. but no one can go there. They’re my secrets. What about you? Do you have a secret life? Do you? http://pilcrowdagger.com/subscriptions/

Anxious I am dancing in the sunlight, the bright, bright light. I know the cloud is there but I can forget it, till I stop. And then.. There it is, even bigger and blacker than before. Darker than ever. It doesn’t like me dancing, doesn’t like the laughter or the sunshine. Brightness breaks it, shatters it into a grey mist. But still it won’t leave me. The brighter the sunlight, the louder the laughter, the greater my fear that it will form again and suck me into it’s darkness. https://issuu.com/wandr…/docs/reflection_wr_mag_nov_dec_2016

Lost All those lost souls wandering sadly in the space of their imaginations. Where are they? I can't find them, can't help them. All those lost socks swallowed. by the washing machine. Eaten up Digested. Where are they? Odd, but I can't find them. All those lost words tumbling through the dictionary. Sometimes I find a few and catch them hold them, write them down. Then, sometimes a few more find me and I grab them too and re arrange them all. Sometimes they are worth reading found and picked up for keeping. First published in Silver Apples Issue 9, People We Left Behind https://silver-apples.squarespace.com/…

Grains of Time Time is running out for me And I sit here gazing into space Watching each grain trickle away. I can't catch them, Can't stop them, Can't slow them down Or speed them up. I can only live the moment As it passes. http://www.lulu.com/…/mgv28…/paperback/product-23133926.html mgv2_88 | Swan Song | 04_17 by Walter Ruhlmann (Paperback) - Lulu Buy mgv2_88 | Swan Song | 04_17 by Walter Ruhlmann (Paperback) online at Lulu. Visit the… LULU.COM

The Hedgerow Fairies Where have they gone, the hedgerow fairies in their harebell hats? I used to see them sitting under their leafy roofs stitching their summer dresses of poppy and mallow petals with long silk threads catching the summer sunlight as the smiling spiders spun. I miss them so, the hedgerow fairies in their harebell hats. I used to see them collecting armfuls of meadow sweet to stuff their nighttime mattresses, making doorways in their new toadstool homes with sharp stones. Maybe they’ve gone underground to escape the passing cars and tractors. Maybe they only come out at night now and stitch and stuff under the moonlight. I don’t know. But I miss them so, the hedgerow fairies in their harebell hats. http://stanzaicstylings.blogspot.co.uk/…/the-hedgerow-fairi… The Hedgerow Fairies by Lynn White The Hedgerow Fairies Where have they gone, the hedgerow fairies in their harebell hats? I used to see them sitting under their leafy roofs ...

Motherly Love I have spent a lifetime trying to break away, trying to break out,  trying to find myself. Always on the edge, always on the outside, not quite a part, of it, not quite a beatnik, or a mod, hippy, or punk. I was early to realise that what she wanted me to be was what she had wanted for herself, about her, not me. I wanted to escape such love. I thought I could escape. I thought I had escaped. And I did, surely I did escape some of it. But not all. Not enough. So even now I feel tethered. After all this time of leaving her behind, I remain unsure of my own. http://heroinchic.weebly.com/blog/poetry-by-lynn-white

Buzzing I can hear the flies buzzing since I died. In life I could shoo them away, open a window to persuade them through, though usually they were too stupid to grasp the chance of freedom offered and escape. Now there is no window to be opened. This is a closed space. Eternal night. No possibility of freedom, or escape. Not for me. Not for them. https://www.paperandinkzine.co.uk/shop PAPER AND INK SHOP PAPER AND INK ONLINE SHOP PAPERANDINKZINE.CO.UK

Who Are You Who are you? Will I find you in your words, the ones you write. Or are you between the lines, hiding there. I think I can discern you there. But you know me so well maybe you control these spaces too. Infiltrate them as well, so well, that you can hide there, in the spaces, the hidden places, between the lines, between the words I’m reading. Perhaps I can read you in the sounds. the melodies, the cacophonies created by your words. Are you there? Maybe it's the language of your body that will reveal you. But not the practiced gestures, the performance, the masquerade. I will have to slowly unpick the mask and unwrap your dreams. Then will I find you and know who you are. http://pilcrowdagger.com/subscriptions/ Subscriptions We publish 8 issues per year. You can subscribe to receive a print version or a digital version. This first issue, January 2015 Winter Stories To Salt Your Icy Road, is free and PILCROWDAGGER.COM

The End Once up on a time he thought the worst would be not knowing what happened next, not knowing how it all ended. Now, with the madness spiraling into an ever tighter vortex, he no longer wants to know more. Now he thinks there will be no end to the madness. Only his end with his death. http://www.lulu.com/…/mgv28…/paperback/product-23133926.html mgv2_88 | Swan Song | 04_17 by Walter Ruhlmann (Paperback) - Lulu Buy mgv2_88 | Swan Song | 04_17 by Walter Ruhlmann (Paperback) online at Lulu. Visit the… LULU.COM

Cabbage Dreams I am dreaming my cabbage dream. I’m peeling off the outer leaves to find what lies hidden beneath. Looks much the same as the outer leaf, a little less battered and crinkled but fundamentally the same. Now for the next layer. There’s a drop of water shining full of light and something darker, more solid, the leavings of some hidden creature. Another layer reveals the holes and the sleepy caterpillar dreaming... without his pipe without his crown, so unsure of his own identity, much less mine. If I peel off layer after layer until I get to the heart of it, will I understand where I’ve come from and be able to unpack the dream, find the pipe and put the pieces together, make sense of the cabbage, crown the king. https://rapoetics.com/

On Our Watch If it had been on his watch, he would have seen, he would have given the alarm, would have been heard and catastrophe would have been avoided. She also was alert, but it was not her watch and no one heard her warnings. On their watch we would have heard the warnings. But it happened on our watch and we were sleeping. http://bluepepper.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/new-poetry-by-lynn-white.html?m=1

The Fall I'm running downhill running faster and faster. I'm crossing the bridge now, still running, running to the end of the bridge, trying to see the end. But there is no end and I'm falling now, falling, falling. falling into the arms of the demons below with their waving arms outstretched and their claws primed waiting to break my fall and swallow me up into their depths. I grasp at the air, cling to the wind flailing, falling. flailing. Then, I’m clinging to a hopeful ray of sunshine to carry me up, to take me with it into the light. Now I'm floating, floating, floating upwards or down. It's not clear, am I still falling or am I floating upwards into the light. http://www.lulu.com/…/mgv28…/paperback/product-23133926.html mgv2_88 | Swan Song | 04_17 by Walter Ruhlmann (Paperback) - Lulu Buy mgv2_88 | Swan Song | 04_17 by Walter Ruhlmann (Paperback) online at Lulu. Visit the Lulu… LULU.COM Remove

Which Way I’m on the edge of the horizon looking back. There’s no looking forwards. Looking up I can see the sky, blue or grey like the sea. Reflected sunlight, clouds rippling like waves making shapes in the sand. Wave shapes on the land. Sometimes it’s so bright I can’t tell the blue from the grey, the cloud from the clear, the sky from the sea. The light blinds me. It’s too bright for my eyes and leaves me confused on the edge of the horizon, on a thin line with only one way to go. https://rapoetics.com/

Embryos Every tree is different. Sometimes it can be a container for an embryonic form, perhaps a parasite yet to grow branches to match it’s parent. Maybe it never will be a match, but always an alien form. Or maybe a new tree will branch out from the belly of another alien form. We must wait and see. Every tree is different. First published in Visual Verse, April 2017 http://visualverse.org/submissions/embryos/

Standing High Sometimes standing high above it all adds colour to a life. Sometimes you can only see the monochrome, the black and white, the greys. But perhaps then I’ll be seen in colour by those looking down or looking up at me, wondering if I will fall. https://creativetalentsunleashed.com/…/writer-highlight-fe…/

In The End In the end I'll be like you. Dust with flakes of skin and bone wrapped in long hair. Teeth chattering With no voice. No sense of taste or smell. No reason. In the end we'll be invisible, impenetrable, anonymous, figments. But then, we always were you and I, we always were. https://treehousearts.me/…/poetry-by-lynn-white-dandelion-…/

Dandelion clocks The field was yellow with dandelion flowers only a week ago. A field of sunshine. I caught it at that moment, a moment in time. And now the moment has passed, clocked off, has become a field of clocks which can’t tell what time it is. Only that the yellow sunshine was fragile, as fragile as a dandelion clock. Only that time has passed leaving only clocks that will soon be wished away in the wind. First published in Midnight Circus, Spring 2017 https://www.amazon.com/Midnight-Circus-Spring-EAB-Publishing/dp/1544774389